By Barbara Rose Shuler
Intermezzo
America’s leading edge of new orchestral music, Santa Cruz’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music is a national treasure with a strong international identity and importance. The Festival is a bright beacon of creativity and inspiration for living composers and new music lovers throughout the world. The Wall Street Journal described the Festival as “two of the most thoughtful and original weekends anywhere in America.”
This miraculous and generous happening, which has evolved over decades, is not just about the music-making, though that is extraordinary. It’s not just about art though art resides at the core of this summer encounter. It’s certainly not about money though sufficient funds arrive, from people and institutions to allow it to happen.
The most precious aspect of the Cabrillo Festival is the people who gather from around the region, nation and world to share this unique creative occasion now led by Romanian-born Cristian Macelaru, a world-class music director and conductor. The lively and talented group of emerging and eminent composers are joined by top professional musicians and supported by the deeply committed board of directors, volunteers, staff members, tech crews, members of the press, students and amazingly dedicated audiences.
The Festival’s great strength is the willing and joyful collaboration of all of these individuals who together create the ideal environment in which this new repertoire can be developed, performed and appreciated.
Cabrillo’s music reflects our times — our personal and universal challenges, desires, strivings and experiences along the spectrum from the scary to the sublime. It speaks to the urgent issues of now, inspiring, awakening and stretching us.
Longtime executive director Ellen Primack expressed similar thoughts opening night when she said, “This week, while I am continually reminded that this Festival is unquestionably about great music, it is about so much more. At its core is the creative process and the role we all play in something bigger and more important than ourselves as individuals…Every organization goes through life cycles and change.
“Cabrillo Festival has moved so confidently and boldly into a new era of music festivals that I confess to be giddy with delight and awe. What we do here has great impact locally but also internationally. Watching music director Cristi Macelaru’s music vision take shape and manifest so powerfully this year is a privilege and an honor.”
Macelaru’s tenure with the Festival began last season when he took the reins from longtime music director and conductor Marin Alsop. The Festival has welcomed him as a perfect match, a brilliant and compassionate conductor with an unwavering vision of the power of art to change the world.
“We all bring everything of who we are to participate in this communion that we celebrate through music and through art,” he says. “If music as a boundless form of expression is at the core of the universe, we must have courage to let it be what it was meant to be — a bond to unite us all.”
The profusion of musical ideas delivered in the two concerts of opening weekend was absolutely riveting. Friday’s musical palate began with Huang Ruo’s “Folk Songs for Orchestra,” a suite for orchestra drawn from traditional Chinese folk songs he learned in his youth, compelling Asian melodies played so effectively by these skilled Western musicians. At the Cabrillo Festival it’s smart to expect the unexpected, which happened when Ruo himself stood and sang a moving “Boatman Song” in a powerful and deeply affecting voice, a spontaneous prelude to the fourth part of his composition.
Zosha Di Castri’s “Dear Life” proved an unusual and fascinating work though its inclusion of a carefully honed pre-recorded reading of the Alice Munro story by actress Martha Henry. Her score deftly wove the spoken words into the musical flow and scintillating counterpoint so that it in effect became music itself, a stunning accomplishment wrought impeccably by Macelaru’s masterful conducting. Mary Mackenzie added another gripping element to the performance with her high soprano and mostly wordless vocal expressions. Di Castri created vivid and unpredictable orchestral textures, making impressive use of the forces in this ensemble.
Pande Shahov’s “Piano Concerto No. 2” brought the lively motifs of Macedonian folk dances center stage, reimagined within free-wheeling contemporary score featuring the spectacular virtuoso keyboard skills of Shakov’s fellow Macedonian, Simon Trpceski. As one familiar with the allure and rhythms of Macedonia folk tunes, it was a treat to hear this intriguing new Festival commission.
The program concluded with the U.S. premiere of “Grana,” by Romanian composer Dan Dediu. His concept of structuring this score around the metaphor of a labyrinth was intriguing, yet it proved a struggle to follow the path he laid out. Ultimately, my ears received a huge impact of orchestral textures while I felt lost either inside or outside of the labyrinth and somewhat shifted out of normal reality. Interestingly, during the composer’s forum the following day, Macelaru mentioned that through repetition and study of the score, he did find the musical path laid out by Dediu. To understand the work more fully, I wish I had taken advantage of the open rehearsals, a highly prized part of the Festival for many of the audience members.
Saturday’s concert began with Vivian Fung’s short and delightful “Dust Devils,” a swirling inner journey with capricious sonorities, quicksilver moods, warbling winds and a big brass flourish — a work inventive and charming. The West Coast premiere of Kristin Kuster’s “Rain on It” offered another enchanting brief study, with lots of intriguing percussion simulating rain sounds and bright energetic motion leading to a satisfying finish.
The centerpiece of the Saturday program featured a terrific performance by violinist Philippe Quint in William Bolcom’s 1984 “Violin Concerto in D,” a jazzy, clever work that bridged old familiar musical styles and new music and had interesting harmonic progressions. The Festival celebrates Bolcom’s 80th birthday this year.
A sweet element of this concert was including works by two of Bolcom’s former students, Kristin Kuster, now a tenured professor at University of Michigan, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s, whose vibrant orchestral concerto “Walkabout” concluded the program.
At the beginning of the second half of the concert, Macelaru announced an addition to the program, a moving and eloquent composition about of the plight of migrants by Karim Al-Zand, which Macelaru asked to be received in silence, with no applause.
For all of you who feel the pull to actively participate in the excitement of the development and realization of new music, head over to Santa Cruz for the final days of the Cabrillo Festival.
The Festival takes place at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. For tickets and more information call 426-6966 or visit www.cabrillomusic.org.
Contact Barbara Rose Shuler at wordways@comcast.net.
